Palladio had a way of making a house look like a temple, and his clients were happy to pay for it. Andrea Palladio, born in Padua in 1508 and trained in Vicenza as a stonemason, designed dozens of villas for the landowners of the Veneto, using the proportions of ancient Rome to give their country houses a sense of order and dignity. The Villa Valmarana, at Monticello Conte Otto, just north of Vicenza, dates from the middle of the sixteenth century and is one of the buildings that UNESCO lists with the city of Vicenza and the Palladian villas of the Veneto. It stands in a field, with a pedimented front and neat flanks, and the loggia is the sort of space that makes you want to sit down and read.
The countryside around is flat, fertile and busy, a landscape of fields, rows of poplar and small factories, with the hills rising in the north. The area is one of the wealthier parts of Italy, and the roads are full of vans, lorries and commuters. Monticello Conte Otto has seven thousand people and fuel, bars and bakeries. Vicenza, a few kilometres south, has more.
The reason to come to this stop is the road north. Beyond Thiene and Schio the Asiago plateau rises in a series of hairpins that are among the most popular in northern Italy, with forests, meadows and war memorials from the First World War. The Pasubio, a rocky mountain with a famous military road, is nearby. The Altopiano is a place of cheese and honey, and the mountain air feels very different from the plain.
The ride continues to Molina di Ledro, in the Trentino, where the lake has a reconstructed prehistoric village on stilts, part of another UNESCO listing for the pile dwellings around the Alps. The contrast of a Renaissance villa and a Bronze Age lakeside makes for an interesting day.
Try baccalà alla vicentina, the local dish of dried cod stewed in milk, served with polenta, and a glass of wine from the nearby Breganze hills. Spring and autumn are the best seasons, when the plain is clear and the mountains are sharp on the horizon.